Biggest surprise was winning the Doppelstern! Neither of us had a FVS, and mine was the 2nd slowest non-FVS time recorded!
Conversely on the Kropki, Chris recorded the 6th fastest time overall, but was still beaten.

I'm really enjoying the switch over to hand-constructed puzzles over on Croco-Puzzle.
The "Twopa" that went up today is a particularly nice example of the sort of thing that couldn't have been done under the old system.
The thematic sets are a little like having a good puzzle test spread out in daily doses.

Personally, I think I do better with these than with the computer generated tests.

I will say that I'm playing the daily puzzles less frequently than I used to. While I agree that the move to include the U2-style puzzles is a good one and I've thoroughly enjoyed the increased variety, I would tend to believe that the difficulty of the puzzles has increased compared to what it was. (This stands to reason, now that the puzzles are hand-generated rather than computer-generated.) Different people will have different preferences, but I tended to prefer the relatively short puzzles and have a suspicion that they have become less frequent over the last month and a bit.

I guess I'm the opposite, 30 second computer-generated puzzles don't interest me (there are phone apps that do that already) so I'd stopped visiting croco. But now I'm back and enjoying the great puzzles from Berni and Silke. And having a weekly window means I don't have to visit every day. Thanks Berni! (Oh, and I got 1st in the Preis two weeks ago, yummy... )

There will be shorter puzzles again. The 15x15-series as well as the windmiles-series tend to produce long puzzles (due to a large puzzle grid). But now, that they are (almost) finished, new series will start, which include also shorter puzzles.

My solve of today's Advent puzzle was mis-timed. I took only a couple of minutes but my time was recorded as over 10 minutes. After initialising, I realised that I wasn't totally familiar with the rules and navigated off to the Preisratsel to check. After returning and solving today's puzzle, I was horrified to find that the timer must have started when I initialised. I vaguely remember this from way back. Can anyone confirm?

david mcneill wrote:My solve of today's Advent puzzle was mis-timed. I took only a couple of minutes but my time was recorded as over 10 minutes. After initialising, I realised that I wasn't totally familiar with the rules and navigated off to the Preisratsel to check. After returning and solving today's puzzle, I was horrified to find that the timer must have started when I initialised. I vaguely remember this from way back. Can anyone confirm?

There are two timers: One on the server which starts when you initialise and one on your computer which starts when you start. Normally the second timer is used, but when you leave the page (the server cannot know whether you allready have seen the puzzle or not) the timer on the server is used. (If you prefer, I can set your time to "unused", which means it doesn't show up in the highscore table and is not used for rating.)

berni wrote:
Basically, crocopuzzle has to be added to an exception list or the level of security has to be reduced. How to do this, depends on the browser you use.

This worked for me (Firefox/WinXP). I had to do the update to Java (1.)7.51 before the exceptions box would appear. (must be a new feature).
Then in windows: Start -> Programs -> Java -> Configure Java.
Security tab: "Edit site List". Follow instructions to add "http://www.croco-puzzle.com" (ignore warnings).

With my computer (Firefox, Win7), it wasn't letting me simply add croco-puzzle to the exceptions list for some reason, even though I had dialed down the security on Java to "medium" (the lowest setting, where it claims it will prompt you about unverified Java stuff).
On the other hand, in the Java setup options, I noticed an option for something like "enable next-gen browser plug-in", which was checked. I unchecked it and restarted the browser, and got it to go back to the previous behavior (which still involves telling Firefox that croco-puzzle is OK and telling it that yes I want to run the Java when it asks and is a minor pain).

ok - with mac os i went to system preferences and then the java control panel. from there i added croco to the site list in the security tab, and all is good. it would seem this is more an issue with java itself rather than any specific browser - it turned out i already had croco has a trusted site in safari's java security settings!

I think it's worth celebrating James' victory in the Tapa variants series recently. We've had UK team members win individual puzzles in the past, but to take 264 names, including some very serious ones, by demonstrating exceptional consistency over the course of a six-puzzle series is well worth congratulation.

Yes I'm quite pleased to top that leaderboard, and with a healthy margin back to 2nd place. And all the top Croco-puzzlers seem to be on there. This one was all about being consistent across the different variants, and making no mistakes.

I've never won any individual puzzle at croco, unlike a few UK solvers, although I've achieved my first two "2nd-places" in this series of six puzzles. My rating is loving the new format and hand-written puzzles of the last two months.

Impressive work James. I managed to win my first daily puzzle earlier in the month when I'd never been in the top 3 before. Not coincidentally this was the first daily puzzle run of the new Yajilin applet. Hopefully it makes plenty of appearences in the league.

furudo.erika wrote:I managed to win my first daily puzzle earlier in the month

Here's to many more! You are already knocking on the door of Croco's top hundred.

While we're talking Croco, congratulations for some recent UK promotions to PuzzleScot (5th kyu, but absolutely searing up the ratings over the last three months), Dataman (4th kyu) and most recently rodders (3rd kyu).

dickoon wrote:... PuzzleScot ... searing up the ratings over the last three months

Thanks. Yeah, it's bizarre. My daily rating has gone up 250 pts since the new format started. (and I've not skipped any either)
Looking at other people's ratings, some are thriving, and some are unaffected. Why? That's a puzzle I can't solve...

dickoon wrote:... PuzzleScot ... searing up the ratings over the last three months

Thanks. Yeah, it's bizarre. My daily rating has gone up 250 pts since the new format started. (and I've not skipped any either)
Looking at other people's ratings, some are thriving, and some are unaffected. Why? That's a puzzle I can't solve...

With respect to myself I know the answer - do well on a few, then go and make stupid mistakes like adding finding a number between 1+3 and coming up with 4 - twice!, pressing the submit button before even getting near to the end etc.

I think the switch to 1 rather than 2 daily puzzles has been a general boost for everyone's ratings - I wonder why that is? And perhaps there is also a gorogoro effect given that he doesn't seem to be solving as often (although kirarin can often be relied on to put in insane solves). Despite making tons of very costly fehlvers recently, I'm still hovering at a rating as good as it ever was in the 2 puzzle era. If i start cutting those out, I'm fairly sure that 1D can become a 2D and maybe even a 3D. Although I'm not sure I'll be catching James just yet

My analysis wild-butted guess is that the decisive factor is not so much the move from two puzles to one as the extension of having puzzles available for a day to having them availabe for a week.

The hardcore solvers will still solve each new puzzle each day, as they ever did. However, the less committed solvers are more likely to take part than they were before, or to take part in more puzzles than they previously would have done, and they will tend to fill the bottom of the leaderboard up with more of the... less accomplished performances than used to be the case. (It used to be rare to get more than 400 participants for a daily puzzle, whereas now if it's a familiar type and the "Best time" is not too intimidating, it's not too uncommon to pick up 400+ participants over the course fo the week.) This will make the 1500-rated performances slower and the requirements for better ratings less onerous.

As someone rather closer towards the bottom of the leaderboard than many here, I welcome the increase in competition more at my level thoroughly!